Magik marks holidays with 'Best Christmas Pageant Ever'

Updated 4:02 pm, Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Becky King (clockwise from left), Ariel Rosen and James “Apollo” Bradley shine as members of a rough-and-tumble family hearing the Christmas story for the first time.

Becky King (clockwise from left), Ariel Rosen and James “Apollo” Bradley shine as members of a rough-and-tumble family hearing the Christmas story for the first time.

Photo: Courtesy Tracey Maurer

Magik marks holidays with 'Best Christmas Pageant Ever'

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SAN ANTONIO — Magik Theatre has several holiday shows in its repertoire, but for its 20th anniversary season, Executive Director Richard Rosen opted to revive “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.”

It's an excellent choice.

The show, which is adapted from Barbara Robinson's book and directed by Rosen, is funny and deeply affecting.

It takes place in a town beset by the Herdmans, a family of hooligans. As told by narrator Beth (Kacey Griffin), the kids swipe lunches, smoke cigars and generally terrify all their peers. The only place safe from their ill behavior, Beth says, is the church.

That ends when Charlie Bradley (Sam Weeks) reveals to one of the Herdmans that Sunday school classes include all sorts of treats. The Herdmans — Ralph (James “Apollo” Bradley), Imogene (Becky King), Leroy (Alex Berkowitz), Claude (Anthony Bosmans), Ollie (Anthony Soto) and Gladys (Ariel Rosen) — turn up for the first time just as roles are being assigned for the annual Christmas pageant. They threaten their way into the choice roles, and their participation causes so much consternation that the show's director, Grace (Monica Hester), realizes it's impossible to find anyone willing to loan their baby to play the child in the manger.

The truth is that pretty much everyone in the church is bored to death by the pageant. To the Herdmans, though, it's all new. They'd never heard the story of Jesus' birth before and demand that Grace tell it to them. As they ask real-world questions about the story — Where were the child welfare authorities when Joseph and Mary were sticking their newborn in a manger? What the heck is the deal with those weird gifts from the wise men? — the whole enterprise takes on new life.

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That happens on the night of the pageant, too, as the Herdmans' rough edges bring the play to vivid life. When Beth complains that “they look like refugees,” her dad (Dylan Collins) gently notes that that's precisely what Mary and Joseph were.

The cast is strong across the board, but King, in particular, shines as her character connects with playing Mary. Her final scene, in which King captures the transformative experience that the pageant has been, is tender and genuinely moving.

A lot of comic relief comes from Richard Solis and David Ankrom as a pair of gossipy church ladies.